Column:
Reparations are about economic stability, not a looted pair of $120 Nikes
AUG 17, 2020 AT 5:00 AM
The union between Black Lives Matter and mainstream America has been tenuous from the start. Last week, it may have been irreparably severed.
Hours after a horde of people descended on the Loop to pillage expensive handbags, jewelry, clothes and other items from mostly high-end stores, BLM Chicago held a solidarity rally outside the police station to support those who had been arrested.
The small group of demonstrators, mostly African American and white young adults, carried a banner that said, “Our Futures Have Been Looted From Us … LOOT BACK.”
That was bad enough. Then Ariel Atkins, a BLM Chicago organizer,
spoke.
“I don’t care if somebody decides to loot a Gucci or a Macy’s or a Nike store because that makes sure that person eats. That makes sure that person has clothes. That is reparations. Anything they want to take, take it because these businesses have insurance.”
It was the most ridiculous
thing I’ve ever heard. Some of those looters are going to end up with a
criminal record that could follow them for the rest of their lives.
Atkins’ contention that looting is a form of reparations for African Americans who have suffered centuries of economic disparity is too radical for most people, even African Americans of Atkins’ parents’ and grandparents’ generations.
The argument for reparations must include comprehensive measures that allow sustained economic stability for the Black community, not merely a short-term financial gain from peddling a $120 pair of stolen Nike’s on the Red Line.
The BLM website is clear about the organization’s mission.
BLM is about eradicating white supremacy and building local power to intervene in violence on Black communities. It is about improving lives and empowering the African American vote. It is about inclusivity — embracing Black gay, lesbian, trans and other marginalized groups within the African American community.
We intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting,” the website says.
The problem with the BLM organization is that it allows too many people to interpret its message. There’s nothing in its mission statement that says the organization supports criminal activity. But that’s what Atkins said.
No one can make a legitimate argument that Black lives shouldn’t matter. Everyone knows, whether they admit it, that institutional racism has relegated Black people to the bottom of every socioeconomic index in America.
There is no risk in acknowledging an unfair system and supporting the effort to raise the status of Black people to that of white people. That’s why mainstream America got behind BLM during the unrest over the police killing of George Floyd.
It becomes complicated, though, when the group leading the effort starts advocating criminal activity as payback for the way America has mistreated Black people. That’s when most Americans, regardless of their race, might decide it’s time to walk away.
Atkins’ comments were counterproductive to the BLM goal to overturn the status quo and force America to move in a direction it has resisted for centuries.
Some young people in the BLM movement seem to think they can succeed at this ambitious task all by themselves. They cannot — as they found out on Tuesday.
When young demonstrators showed up in Englewood to protest the police shooting that injured 20-year-old Latrell Allen, a group of older Black residents met them on the street and demanded that they leave. It wasn’t a pleasant exchange.
The confrontation points to a gaping disconnect between young people and their elders. Many older people in Englewood, a neighborhood besieged with violence, don’t want young people from the outside coming in without a serious plan of action and stirring things up.
They understand what many of these young people do not — that real
change requires more than gathering in front of a police station and calling
for justice. It requires seats at the table where decisions are made and voices
speaking in unison.
The loosely organized protesters have no carefully constructed plan of action that would make residents of Englewood feel secure enough to risk standing with them.
Having lived in a neighborhood where police tensions always have been high, these residents were forced to develop their own system of dealing with the injustices they encounter regularly. That includes walking a straight and narrow line that keeps them out of the path of the police as well as the neighborhood troublemakers.
They aren’t interested in aligning with anyone who drops by when things are heated and then goes back to their own safe neighborhoods at the end of the day, leaving them to suffer from the fallout.
Young people might call them cowards. But they see themselves as
survivors.
It’s easy to understand why young people are impatient. They don’t want to wait until they are too old to enjoy the things that others their age take for granted.
The way they see it, activists like the Rev. Jesse Jackson failed to seal the civil rights deal. If they had, young people wouldn’t still be fighting for the things their elders fought for 60 years ago.
They are convinced they can get what they want without support from the white mainstream or the majority of African Americans. They are wrong.
When you don’t have the support of your own people, the entire
premise of Black Lives Matter falls flat. If Black people aren’t convinced that
the BLM group is working for the good of Black people, white people are going
to be right behind them out the door.
Rep. John Lewis, who devoted his life to making sure Black lives mattered in this country, reminded us that all trouble isn’t good trouble. There simply is no reasonable way to equate felony burglary with social justice reform.
That’s not to say that looting isn’t sometimes the result of pent-up anger within marginalized communities. But there’s a big difference between going to jail for standing against police brutality and getting arrested for breaking into Macy’s and filling a shopping bag with makeup.
Jackson tweeted that the looting was “humiliating, embarrassing
& morally wrong. It must not be associated with our quest for social
justice and equality.”
To that, Atkins responded:
“Jesse Jackson has nothing to do with Black Lives Matter. Jesse Jackson was not there during the creation of Black Lives Matter. Jesse Jackson can keep his opinions to himself.”
Somebody needs to sit Atkins down and give her a Black history lesson. Jackson was fighting to make Black lives matter at a time when someone like her had to hold their pee all day rather than sit on a toilet that white people used.
The problem with millennials like Atkins is that they seem to think they are inventing a progressive wheel that their elders could never fathom. In fact, they are drowning in ignorance.
Black people don’t have to steal from high-end stores in order to prove to America that Black lives matter. Our value is greater than a $2,000 Gucci handbag.
But people who don’t understand their history cannot possibly know
their worth.